Success as a Financial Advisor For Dummies

Chapter 15

Offering Collaborative Value-Added Advice

IN THIS CHAPTER

Noting the value of a team-based approach

Teaming up with lawyers, accountants, and other professionals

Organizing and leading your client’s advisory team

Although it may take a village to raise a child, it takes only a small group of talented and dedicated professionals working together to manage a client’s finances. The problem that many prospective clients have, even though few are aware it’s a problem, is that they’ve siloed the various products and services they use for financial security and wealth-building. They may do their own bookkeeping and hire an accountant to do their taxes. They have a lawyer prepare their wills and business documents, but they probably don’t have an estate plan. They have insurance policies purchased from one or more brokers. And have various types of investments cobbled together as part of their retirement “plan” and wealth-building “strategy.”

This haphazard approach to financial management poses two problems:

• Lack of alignment and balance: For optimum performance, a client needs to set goals and align all elements of her financial life with those goals, just as a business must ...